Paul Schrader claims to have the "perfect script" for an AI-generated feature

“I was just on the phone with someone today about a script I had, and I said, ‘You know, this would be a perfect script to do all AI,’” Schrader says in a new interview with Vanity Fair at the mention of AI “actors” like Tilly Norwood. When asked about his embrace of it, Schrader said “it’s just a tool,” explaining, “When you’re an author, you have to describe someone’s reaction. You use a code–you use a code of words, a certain number of letters, and so forth, and you express their facial reaction. An actor has their own code. Well, now you’re a pixelator, and you can create the face, and you can create the emotion on the face, and you can sculpt it the same way an author sculpts the reaction in a novel or a story.” 

Of course, there is a range of AI technology, from tools like a Respeecher used in The Brutalist to the wholesale generation of images like Norwood. But Schrader seems to be of the opinion that it’s pretty much all good, at least based on this interview where he goes on to claim that “AI is taking over film coverage, as you must know. AI does better coverage than the average coverage.” Schrader is probably correct that an all-AI feature is not too far off, with filmmakers like Radu Jude and Harmony Korine already experimenting with it. But it should be noted that even with Schrader’s hypothetical AI feature, there’s still a man behind the computer writing the script.